Debate and Discussion

i think we have about five years maybe less, until everything that we know is turned upsidedown.i'm basing this on a number of things, and a lot of gut feeling. being a child of the 80s i've been preprogrammed for apocalyptic thought, but seriously if you look around , if you read , it's hard not to think that the world as we know it can't possibly keep going on the way it is. i'm not talking about change, i meen massive disruption of our basic ways of life !

so , my question is this - How do you imagine life will be in 10 - 15 years ? Why would it be like that ? personally, i don't think that there will even be an internet by that time. or at least it won't be accessable to a majority of the people who are using it now. there will most likely be severe fuel and food shortages. War and climate change will make life for many peopel miserable … i'm starting to depress myself, does anybody have a positive outlook for the future ?

*i posted this in “Debate and discussion” because there is so much contraversy surounding the factors that determine what the future wil be .

subculturedif you really put it into perspective{4.5 billion years of earth's life} Armageddon happens often. either from asteroid impact, volcanic gases, ice age , and etc.

You know, I don't think it does… I think that the “Armageddon” ways of thinking about extinction events in the past, as well as that which gave rise to Lothar's 80's born fatalism is the result of a mainly Christian American apocalyptic way of thinking… I noticed that trend years ago, but really, most of the apocalypse theories, fatalistic thought, apocalypse movies etc COME from the US. And given the strength of Christian thought in the US and all throughout the history of that country (it was “popularly” founded by Christian extremists), that's not surprising.

The overall idea seems to be that apocalypse is inevitable and part of some positive cycle of rebirth that people should actually work towards. Now Japan seems to have an apocalypse fascination too, mostly because of their constant history of natural disasters through earthquake, Tsunami, And lately the fire-bombing and the two nuclear bombs during WW2.

But really, apocalypse is simply a way of interpreting events because of a conditioned way of thinking. DO they ever really happen? Well, even with the disasters Japan has experienced in it's history none of those disasters have ever been anywhere near total, taken as an overall event in the context of history the bounce-back has always been rather quick and pretty complete. And I've read about the “mass extinction” events, not about those STUPID accounts of meteorite strikes that are so BADLY, BADLY written about but about the fossil records themselves and the times of ice ages and things and while they seem sudden in the context of geological time, in terms of what we think about time they took an eternity. What I'm saying is that the deeper you look into it, the more you realise that rather than being an inevitable fact that you have to live with, apocalypse is mostly more of a twisted aspiration driven mostly by a certain interpretation of Christian thought and as very as a bit of strange cultural conditioning from Japan that's been influenced by their unfortunate position on the Pacific rim and them losing ww2 so very badly.

Is an apocalypse inevitable? No. But if you believe in it hard enough you might help to work towards one and make it happen.

It's highly unlikely that the apocalypse will come any time soon. There aren't any MAJOR wars going on (As much as people like to pretend the war in Iraq is, it's not really that important overall), it is possible to knock any large objects that are flying towards the planet, it would take an ENORMOUS volcanic eruption to cause any major problems, and that almost never happens, and despite what everyone seems to think, there probably aren't enough nuclear bombs in existance to cause any worldwide problems.

So unless God swoops down and says “Fuck you Earth, it's apocalypse time!”, we're probably fine. The only reason it might feel like the apocalypse is that it ALWAYS does, no matter what time period you happen to be in. Ancient Christians thought the world was going to end just a few years after Jesus died. The Norse probably sat around saying “Damn, I sure hope those gods and giants don't start up Ragnarok any time soon!”

Really, everyone just needs to calm down. Nothing particularly bad is likely to happen any time soon. It might, but it probably won't.

What a terribly odd thought. I can't see why I should be more afraid to die than I was to be born.

Whereas the end of the world - that's scary. As a human being, I expect that humanity will live on after me. That is, I was born mortal - i wasn't expecting to last. But everyone else? i want them to continue.

i like that ! almost as much as i like windmills. my fatalism seems to come and go, mostly driven by what i read in the news. but i was looking at a childrens picture book about ships of the British empire the other day and i was struck by how barbaric those poples lives were back then. how on Earth they could get people to do that kind of stuff, it looks crazy. so maybe we're not devolving, maybe we're just moving very slowly , much slower than other species like bees and moths.

but i still can't exept the old excuse that things are better now than they were a century ago, when things are much worse than people a century ago thought they would be by now !!!

In world politics, the USA hegemony is actually not gonna be complete. Because Russia and China are allied… and these two countries are courting countries that USA considers an ‘enemy’.

Notice how Russia has supplied Iran with AA (anti-air) systems and other types of weapons? Communism and Islam are not compatible… but Russia is doing this to help stop the USA influence.

And look how China is still careful not to piss off North Korea. China's communism is DIFFERENT from North Korea's “Juche Idea”. If you read dailynk.com, there were a few articles pointing to sometimes strained relations between China and NK. Why is China still friendly to NK? Because China doesnt want NK to fall… because if it does, USA will be at its doorstep. And if war breaks out in Taiwan for instance, USA can hit Chinese targets from North Korea.

I think all this talk of the end of the world is very important only to us.The world will survive just about anything but a cosmic cataclysm.

I think what many people here are referring to is the end of humanity. And that has been a long road with many sign posts. In much the same way as we beging to slowly die at our conception, humanity has been slowly laying the seeds for its own demise. Aside from the aforementioned cosmic disaster, or the accidental nuclear extermination of the planet, we seem hell bent on methodically poisoning our environment and alienating each other.

One of my favorite rueful chuckles came strangely enough during the Clinton impeachment. reporters would stop people on the street and ask them what there feelings were on the sex scandall, and if it was impeachable.

Almost without fail some automaton who probably never read anything more challenging than TV Guide would eloquently posit the talking point“It's not the sex, it's subbornation of perjury.” Hey Goober, well argued!!

Here I feel is the proof of what DEVO was saying. Freedom is a pain in the ass, it requires too much thinking and responsibility. We want politicians and TV shows to do our thinking for us. It's the reason why healthy girls and women starve themselves to look like teenage boys with breasts implants. Because the TV said so. That's why so many countries exert control over the media. We want someone to tell us what to do. Free will is the first thing to whither in the human condition. We are rotting from the inside out, and that is more likely to bring about the end of humanity then a meteor or global warming.

bobhhhWe want politicians and TV shows to do our thinking for us. It's the reason why healthy girls and women starve themselves to look like teenage boys with breasts implants. Because the TV said so. That's why so many countries exert control over the media. We want someone to tell us what to do. Free will is the first thing to whither in the human condition. We are rotting from the inside out, and that is more likely to bring about the end of humanity then a meteor or global warming.

The sentiment behind this I agree with. Humankind sans some serious reality checks is more likely to continue inward self-destruction. Yes, humankind can affect the planet temporarily in various ways but the planet itself has proven it can re-generate over time. Self-destruction, though reversible (unless successful in a suicide) does much more damage because so many individuals are engaging in it at the same time, affecting countless others around them, and it's damage is much harder to pinpoint, deal with and reverse.

Although I mildly disagree that free will withers. I think it is free will on steroids that leads to poor choices – including choosing to go with trends, self-isolation, violence against self and others, destructive substance abuse, etc.

Back to the spirit of the original post, I'm a gloomy pessimist about the future of America. I don't have a unified theme to this, just points of paranoia and gloom.

I don't think my son's life will be better than mine. But I see everything through lens of the economy. If present trends continue, I cannot see how the US economy and the US way of life will thrive. I hope I'm wrong.

I think the corporations will continue to expand and control to become something out of a cyberpunk story. (Notice how that genre has peaked and faded?) At some point, the networking of computers is going to reach a critical mass and some powerful corp or government faction is going to exploiting the data mining of social networks and other sources and really start blackmailing and controlling society. What if your employer could find every post you ever made and check it for improper ideas. What if your next raise was denied because of something you posted 3 years ago that didn't match the pro government stance of your employer. A couple of high profile firings like that with the pro authority courts saying it was OK, and it would change society. How chilling would that be to free speech? The McCarthy witch hunts on Steroids. Especially if we are in Depression, and jobs are scarce.

I think that America is going to freak when oil prices go through the roof. We have had the golden society, living fat dumb and happy for so long, coasting. I think the masses will vote for any dictator that will keep their Walmart stuff cheap. We don't have the social will to pay more to keep middle class jobs in America. The masses want the cheapest prices at any cost. It will take a great depression to bring back the idea of shared sacrifice, if ever.

I can see the US collapsing like the USSR, brought on the the crippling debt of the NeoCon agenda, destroying the “Great Society”. I see America going the way of a third world Central American country, with the Ultra Rich in walled compounds controlling all government and corporations and the extreme poor is everyone else, poor, uneducated and helpless. And no middle ground or middle class.

I see the American dollar being worth little and being dropped as a standard. Inflation like Argentina maybe?

This will be China's Century and we will be a faded state like Britain, France and the USSR. We don't manufacture anything. We are losing the infrastructure, even if we wanted to go back. China holds our debt and makes our stuff. They own us and we don't want to admit it. Taiwan is in big trouble. When China flexes it's muscles, we won't have any resources left to stop them.

I think America could become very dangerous as we lash out, trying to maintain our standard of living, while being broke. Like a starving animal.

With the collapse of the US social support networks, a powerful plague will come through, decimating the population, because we don't have the resources to stop it.

Personally, if it doesn't or does, I'll be eating canned meat rations and dry foods and playing xbox from my bomb shelter either way. And unlike people from the Twilight Zone or similar stories, I could give a shit less about other people who used to be my friends and family. They're now just genetic vampires and its up to Will Smith to fight them off in I AM LEGEND, coming to theaters this Christmas!

let's see… civilization as we know it will crumble. we will all die after awhile from lack of food and water, disease, and basically killed by wild animals. because there are no humans factories, chemicals, and green house gases will deminish. we will go into another massive Ice Age. this will cause an oxygen build-up. some animals will survive all this and one out of a billion different species will become intelligent and will roam the earth as the ruling animal. they will develop things beyond what anyone can think of. then another bout of global warming will com along and hisory will repeat itself OR they will live on until the ends of this planet OR until the sun dies.